On Sunday, I re-visited Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial museum in the Jerusalem hills. The museum has changed dramatically since my last visit there some thirty years or so ago. It's extremely impressive, almost overwhelming to such an extent that I wonder if some people don't just shut down in there after a while. Those who suffered the event didn't have that option, but those viewing it from this more comfortable distance of time and space do -- or at least most of us who aren't re-visiting our own past do. At any rate, if you've never been there, or haven't been there lately, you should put it on your to do list. And plan to spend several hours.
This inscription from Ezekiel 37:14 is carved into the top of the massive stone portal that spans the entrance/exit of Yad Vashem:
I will put my breath into you and you shall live again, and I will set you upon your own soil.
Well, you read that, and then you realize where exactly you're standing, and it kind of takes your own breath away. There are other similar reminders, such as the view that awaits you at the end of the very long zigzagging path through the prism-shaped corridor that forms the spine of the history exhibit building. So as I was walking through, my mind was filing away some thoughts for dissecting later, and now is as good a time as any to try to begin fleshing a few of them out.
One of the popular variations on Holocaust denial, which I've had the misfortune of stumbling upon with increasing frequency lately, is the proposition that the massacre of European Jewry was somehow "good" for Zionism because it created the excuse for the creation of a Jewish State. This is an apparent paradox that we Zionists of various stripes allow ourselves to wrestle with from time to time, although I think some of us spend far too much time agonizing over it for reasons that should become clear below.
Realizing that they've hit a nerve, though, the Holocaust deniers and anti-Zionists go a step further and assert that various Jewish and Zionist organizations actively encouraged, assisted or were somehow complicit in Hitler's extermination campaign in order to assure that the State of Israel would come into being. This is, simply put, a vicious and ludicrous slander, based largely upon two fallacies: 20/20 hindsight and a misrepresentation of cause and effect.
It's 20/20 hindsight because there was no reason to think, prior to the end of World War II, that most of the world gave a damn what happened to the Jews. Certainly few nations betrayed the slightest concern or prick of conscience over the fate of those whom Hitler had condemned to death. Who knew that after the fact there would be a change of heart and a flood of guilt? Few Jews at the time held out such hopes after watching for years the averted eyes, the rejected boatloads of refugees and the white papers. If there were some who dared anticipate that things would change in the aftermath of the war, they were a quiet minority.
But more interesting is the causation angle. The slander assumes two things. First, it assumes that that the Holocaust was a necessary condition of the founding of the State of Israel, i.e., that there would have been no Jewish State without the Holocaust (or, some would say, the "Holocaust myth"). Second, it assumes that the Holocaust was a sufficient condition of the founding of Israel, i.e., that, after the Holocaust, the establishment of the State of Israel was more or less inevitable.
Both of these premises are false. Taking the last one first, one can easily imagine a world in which the Holocaust not only played no role in the founding a Jewish State but made such a state virtually impossible. If Hitler had had a little more time, there might not have been enough Jews left in Europe or the Middle East to populate such a state. And, again, one can easily imagine a world in which the indifference of the nations to the plight of the Jews continued after the war. No sufficient cause here.
On the other hand, coming down now to the nitty gritty, would Israel have been established if not for the Holocaust? Was it really only global guilt over that atrocity that forced the nations to concede that the Jewish People had a right to self-determination? Even though there was a sweeping recognition of the rights of just about every other national and ethnic group to a home of their own, would the Jews have been overlooked if not for the loss of one-third of their number in the camps and the mass graves? While the Holocaust deniers and anti-Zionists would like to think so, while that's the kind of world they would prefer to live in, I think the answer is probably no.
Remarkably enough, in addition to everything else that it is, Yad Vashem is a living testament to the necessity of a Jewish State, above and beyond the horrors that are documented there. It's a testament to the fundamental underlying unity of the Jewish People and our connection to our land -- the land that's under your feet and all around you as you walk through the exhibit. Like I said, extremely impressive and somewhat overwhelming.
So now I'm back here in the States, readjusting my internal clock and, well, other things, to this different reality. It's definitely tougher flying West.
Shabbat Shalom.
